There is also a certain political expediency: Many of the Democrats airing misgivings about the N.R.A. and its views are now competing in primaries where they are playing to an audience of fellow Democrats and not yet the entire electorate. Their hostility to the N.R.A. in the spring could certainly fade by the fall, but in past election cycles, many candidates would have regarded openly crossing the N.R.A. as too risky even in primary races.
“I don’t know that voters would have been more receptive; I think that candidates would have been more timid,” Stacey Abrams, a Democrat running for governor of Georgia, said last month before she addressed a March for Our Lives rally near the southern tip of the Appalachian Trail and promoted her history of poor ratings from the N.R.A.
To be sure, some Democrats in conservative-leaning states, like Ms. Abrams, have long been willing to challenge the group, especially in urban areas — but there were rarely very many of them. Meanwhile, rural Democrats often did the opposite, and actively courted the N.R.A., whose seal of approval and potent ability to mobilize its members could lift a candidate of either party to victory.
That era is not completely over. But many Democrats have grown wary of an organization that they believe has effectively evolved into an extension of the Republican Party, and they have begun to wonder whether they would be better off putting some distance between themselves and the N.R.A. The most fervent supporters of gun rights, some Democrats reason, are unlikely to support their campaigns no matter what they do.
“I think those that are hypersensitive to this issue are likely not going to be voting for us anyway, and I understand that, because there are voters who believe that any discussion
